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Otto Hintze's Response to the Crisis of Historicism

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Otto Hintze's Response to the Crisis of Historicism HISTÓRIA DA Article HISTORIOGRAFIA Otto Hintze’s response to the crisis of historicism A resposta de Otto Hintze para a crise do historicismo Marcelo Durão Rodrigues da Cunha a E-mail: [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6585-6836 a Instituto Federal do Espírito Santo, Unidade Vitória, Vitória, ES, Brasil ABSTRACT This article aims to shed light on the theoretical contributions of the historian Otto Hintze to the RESUMO intellectual context experienced by German historical Este artigo tem o objetivo de trazer à tona as contribuições science in the late nineteenth and the first half of teóricas oferecidas pelo historiador Otto Hintze ao the twentieth century. To do so, I proceed from the contexto intelectual vivido pela ciência histórica alemã assumption that Hintze’s positions were constituted nas décadas finais do Oitocentos e na primeira metade as an attempt to answer the crisis of historicism: do século XX. Para tanto, parto do pressuposto de que namely, the collapse of trust in the Western-centered as posições de Hintze se constituíram em grande medida concept of history in modern times. From that previous como uma tentativa de resposta à crise do historicismo: definition, I argue that his individual ethics derived o colapso da crença sustentada por parte da burguesia from what I describe as his two main theoretical letrada alemã, no sentido “singular coletivo”, adquirido contributions, developed to overcome such a crisis: the pelo conceito de história na modernidade ocidental. À desacralization of modern state politics and his scientific luz dessa definição preambular, busco compreender reconceptualization of historicism. Finally, I claim that a ética individual de Hintze como uma posição both the crisis of historicism itself and the responses derivada do que defendo terem sido as duas principais offered by Hintze to overcome it remain largely present contribuições desse historiador para o debate em to reflect on some of the challenges professional tela: a dessacralização da política do Estado moderno historiography still faces in the twenty-first century. e a sua reconceitualização científica do historicismo. Finalmente, defendo que tanto a crise do historicismo em si, quanto as respostas oferecidas por Hintze para a sua superação permanecem presentes para refletirmos a respeito de alguns desafios vivido pela historiografia KEYWORDS profissional ainda no século XXI. Otto Hintze; Historicism; Crisis of Historicism PALAVRAS-CHAVE Otto Hintze; Historicismo; Crise do Historicismo 115 Hist. Historiogr., Ouro Preto, v. 13, n. 32 p. 115-145, jan.-abr. 2020 - DOI https://doi.org/10.15848/hh.v13i32.1485 Marcelo Durão Rodrigues da Cunha Introduction For a long time, historians and historians of historiography associated nineteenth and twentieth century German historical science solely with Leopold von Ranke and a theoretically naive type of historical knowledge limited by its narrow interest in politics, diplomacy and the history of European states. Although it is not completely mistaken to affirm the clear links between this tradition of historical thought with a history from above ( of great men, national heroes, and the prominence of the European great powers), such a 1 - Especially from the 1960s on- superficial view contributed to create a simplistic regard wards, the term ‘his- towards German historiography which, from Ranke toricism’ was seen by some historians as an to Friedrich Meinecke, is, in many cases, still seen by obsolete tradition and some historians as a simple-minded and politically part of an ideology that had contributed incautious kind of historicism. to Germany’s major catastrophes in the Being largely a construction of the Historical Social twentieth century. See Iggers (1995). Science that emerged in Germany during the 1960s and the 1970s,1 this simplistic view of the pre-World War II 2 - See Fried- rich Jaeger and Jörn German historical science has, in the last few decades, been Rüsen, Geschichte challenged by numerous studies preoccupied with a more des Historismus (1992); Frederick pluralistic outlook not only on Rankean historiography alone, C. Beiser, The Ger- but also the twentieth century intellectual heirs of this classical man historicist tradi- tion (2011); Flávia F. version of historicism. In the wake of these historiographical Varella, Helena M. incursions, historians of German historiography were Mollo, Sérgio R. da Mata and Valdei L. able to produce a great variety of works that unveil the de Araujo (orgs.), complexity of the Rankean legacy itself and to yield a A dinâmica do Histori- cismo (2008). large volume of research which revealed the theoretical nuances of historicism as well as its relevance to present day historical thought.2 A good example of this trend is the place that a name like Otto Hintze (1861-1940) have come to occupy in the discussions of international historiography in the last few decades. More than a mere maintainer of nineteenth century historiographical premises, Hintze has come to be seen by interpreters of his work as a historian who—at a time of deep crisis in historical knowledge 116 Hist. Historiogr., Ouro Preto, v. 13, n. 32 p. 115-145, jan.-abr. 2020 - DOI https://doi.org/10.15848/hh.v13i32.1485 Otto Hintze’s response to the crisis of historicism and in the Western scientific thought as a whole—offered complex and updated responses to the challenges faced by the historical discipline in the early decades of the twentieth century.3 From his embrace of interdisciplinarity, his appeal to expand the subject matter of history and his efforts to renew the theoretical perspectives of traditional historiography, Hintze has become an inescapable reference for those concerned with better grasping the contours of the historical discipline during Germany’s Wilhelmine and Interwar periods.4 Therefore, his legacy has also been revisited by interpreters who regard his work as containing roots of the social history, which was widely practiced by post-1945 3 - An English language synthesis Western historiography. of Hinze’s intellectu- al biography and his main historiographi- In line with these historiographical tendencies, my objective cal contributions has in this article is to bring to light some of Hintze’s theoretical recently appeared in Leonard S. Smith’s contributions, by dealing especially with two elements which The Expert’s Historian I believe are central to understanding his historiographical (2017). legacy: (1) the desacralization of modern state politics, which 4 - Important is operated by Hintze’s theoretical interpretation of Western contributions have also recently been modernity, and (2) Hintze’s rational definition of the concept made by Wolfgang of historicism that led to what he identified as a “healthy” and Neugebauer (2015), who—though not “volitional” type of decisiveness, developed under Max Weber’s dealing directly with influence during the 1920s. the problems of his- toricism—pays special attention to Hinze’s Hence, I claim that the development of the historian’s precocious inclination theoretical position was a particular reaction to how I towards comparative and global historical will define the “crisis of historicism”: a collapse of trust outlooks. in the modern “collective singular” Western-centered concept of history, which affected parts of the German literate bourgeoisie and certain representatives of German historical thought of the Interwar era. Finally, having demonstrated such hypothesis, I will provide basis for the idea that both the crisis of historicism itself and the responses offered by Hintze to overcome it remain largely relevant to reflect on some of the challenges historiography in the twentieth-first century faces still. 117 Hist. Historiogr., Ouro Preto, v. 13, n. 32 p. 115-145, jan.-abr. 2020 - DOI https://doi.org/10.15848/hh.v13i32.1485 Marcelo Durão Rodrigues da Cunha The crisis of historicism or the dissolution of the modern concept of history Everything has individuality and is a law to itself, everything is relative and in a state of flux: then give me the point where I can stand. How can we emerge from this anarchy of values? (MEINECKE 1959, p. 377). When writing these words in 1923, the historian and Hintze’s personal friend, Friedrich Meinecke, refers to the instability that defined the culture of his time and which he believed had emerged with even greater vehemence in the early decades of the twentieth century. “Relativity”, “anarchy of values”, and “state of flux”, were symptoms of what Meinecke identified as the ambiguous development of the German tradition of historical thought in the last two centuries. Meinecke believed that despite having possessed the virtue of liberating modern man from the old universalist dogmatism of the pre-modern era, historicism with its emphasis on the historicity of the world, had pointed to the transience of all things over time, revealing the finite, limited and relative character of values and human institutions throughout history. Meinecke’s diagnosis arose as a response to what the theologian Ernst Troeltsch had earlier defined as the “crisis of historicism”: “the dissolution of the state, law, morality, art, and religion in the flow of becoming historical”, which was largely responsible for the atmosphere of uncertainty experienced during that era (TROELTSCH 1922, p. 573). Troeltsch, Meinecke and Hintze debated these issues during their weekly walks in the Berlin district of Dahlem at least since the beginning of the Great War in 1914, when they began
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